Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost (1874-1963)
I've always loved this poem — "The Road Less Taken" (1916) — because of its obvious truths (there are several less obvious ones as well, such as the ambiguous sigh, and the fact that neither of the roads is very much "traveled by"). But in our lives we do make decisions that make all the difference: whom we marry, what kind of work we do, where we live. Sometimes it's a clear choice, sometimes we slide into things not fully awake; and sometimes it's plain luck, bad or good. Some turnings are fearfully elemental: Should we go to school, should we have a child, should we obey the law? A bad choice here and you're on the wrong road, probably for life.
On the other hand, it often seems that we no longer believe in these kinds of "permanent" choices: most people today have multiple marriages, multiple partners, multiple jobs and multiple addresses. Now, early in 2010, I'm thinking of starting a poem like this:
A thousand roads split in a wood, and I—
I took the fifty nearest by,
But it didn't make much difference...
Still, our own lives — Jeanne's and mine — were marked by clear Frostian choices. I was working for her dad, selling real estate in 1959, making good money (I was a tongue-tied salesman but he steered "sure" buyers my way), when I was showing a piece of land to a customer. "Where d'you work?" I asked, making small talk, not caring diddly.
"I'm a teacher at Mt. Lakes High School."
"Really? I once thought about being an English teacher," I said, perking up a little. I'd been an English major, and loved it, but never even considered graduate school. Being the first in our family to go to college had seemed quite enough to all of us.
"Funny," he said. "The English teacher at school got drafted yesterday."
Like Paul on the road to Jerusalem, I stiffened as if hit by a flash of light from the sky. I hadn't even known I was unhappy — how dumb can you get? — but could hardly breathe, though the only Voice I heard was my customer asking something about the lot we were standing on. I left him with his mouth hanging open, drove directly to the school and applied for the job. What I didn't realize, until much later, is that the school was panting for any available young man — ready or not — as all the eligible ones were being drafted; and I had served my time already.
Three hours later, my arms loaded with shiny new schoolbooks, I came home and said to Jeanne, "Guess what? I just took a job teaching English for $4,000 a year."
Neither of us thinks she blinked an eye. "Good," Jeanne said. "We better go and tell Daddy."
That was a mighty divergence in the road for us, which in turn, as Frost observed, opened other roads, leading to destinations like Neuchâtel, Warsaw, Honolulu, James Thurber's house, the island of Skopelos and the Chateau de Lavigny. It still amazes us that the choice was made so quickly, in one afternoon.
When I first saw Jeanne, my bride-to-be, it took a bit longer — interrupted by two years in the Army — but it was clear that our first meeting, as she walked down the stairs of her sorority house at Syracuse University, was going to be important. On a rainy evening, we were borrowing her car to take some other girls out on a date (a friend knew she had a Jeepster); as soon as I got back to Hamilton College I wrote a letter asking her out. I told everyone she had the cutest little jeep I ever saw.
On our first date — drinking beer at a popular bar in Syracuse called "The Orange" — we exited the joint holding hands, and somehow found ourselves on opposite sides of a sizable hedge. Again, not blinking an eye (an obvious premonition of future behavior), she lightly jumped over the hedge, and we sauntered on as if we hadn't just witnessed a world-class athletic feat.
. . . LISTEN: lies are all around us
it's only sporting life is tricky
like poetry lies lies abound
testing you setting you up
for an occasional truth
like this:
If you see a woman leap over a hedge
marry her on the spot
take her forcibly on the greensward for
your life depends on it
if you want to be happy
at 40
—from "Happy at 40," by Peter Meinke
—Mr. Meinke will read his poetry at the "Writers in Paradise" Conference, Eckerd College, on Tuesday Jan. 19th, at 7:30.
